Of time and the princess
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- June
- 19
Seeing Matt Lauer interview princes William and Harry on NBC this week reminded me just how much the world has changed since Princess Diana died 10 years ago.
Back then, I was the reporter who covered her death for this newspaper, and I wrote a series of emotional pieces about an emotional subject that drew a suitably emotional response. (I’ll never forget the voice-mail I got from one Englishwoman who was passing through Westchester, had picked up the paper and read my appreciation. The memory still gives me a certain frisson.)
Now 10 years later, I realize that time is the only victor. Emotional, expressive, empathetic Princess Diana is dead. Her boys are grown men. And Queen Elizabeth II, who seemed so reserved, even cold and unfeeling at that time, has emerged sympathetically and triumphantly in “The Queen,” in which she is the only fully drawn character. (How much better that movie would’ve been had it been about these two women, instead of the Princess of Wales being the ghost who hovers over the narrative.)
Ten years later, Princess Diana is as protean a metaphor as she ever was. She remains a cautionary tale of what happens when a woman doesn’t trust her own radiance and instead cedes the driver’s seat to a man, quite literally. She’s a heartbreaking symbol of the way an expressive nature is in the end worn down by a reserved one. (This seems to be a big turn-of-the-21st century theme. It’s the subtext of the “Rome” series and almost every Ang Lee film, including “Brokeback Mountain”.)
But most of all, Princess Diana is a reminder of how the wheel does turn. Ten years ago, she was seen as a martyr. Ten years later, revisionist history portrays her as victim and victimizer, much as we have come to view another iconic blonde, Marilyn Monroe.
I still love Princess Diana, and I mourn her passing. She was so full of life, and she adored her two boys as they adored her. But I see now what I couldn’t have seen then, which is how much televised images captured her persona:
She appeared on the red carpet of life in a glittering light-bulb flash and was gone.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 5:12 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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Diana was a beautiful woman and raised 2 fine young men. I watched them on Dateline last night. It is hard to imagine that she has been gone 10 years. I remember that day like yesterday.